By delightfully melding combat and puzzle solving with solid pinball physics, Mario Pinball is not only the first pinball action/adventure game, but it's also a damn good one at that. [Nov 2004, p.130]

It combines the general concepts behind tabletop pinball with the characters and worlds from the Mario franchise to create a strange sort of adventure game that's fairly fun but a little on the short side.

Like that hot popular girl in high school - gorgeous on the outside but no personality on the inside. Mario Pinball Land is just too generic, and though it has the Mushroom Kingdom cast supporting it the gameplay is fully capable of causing splitting headaches.

There's a major flaw in actually controlling Mario, as the physics just don't seem to act as they should - aiming at specific targets can be extremely tricky at times, making completing some tasks more infuriating than challenging. It's a shame, because everything else about Super Mario Ball is so impressive.

A maddening, misguided mongrel of a game... Luck plays a huge part, and simply navigating the world can be exactly as hard as the hardest challenge: a random, enraging, minutes-long bore, especially with moving enemies straying across your line. [Dec 2005, p.115]

Cute and the Mario theme is well applied, with lots of familiar elements from games throughout the series, but fun soon gives way to pure frustration and the whole affair is over far too quickly. [JPN Import]

I think this desire to innovate in the genre comes at the expense of what's ultimately good abuot pinball itself...There's not one individual stage that has that incredibly addictive "I could play this until I die" feeling that you get from a well-made traditional pinball machine. [Oct 2004, p.147]

The perfect example of an experiment gone awry. If only the physics were just a little more realistic, it would help a great deal, but as it is, the game just gets to be annoying before you ever start to have fun.

Given that most gamers will be able to plough through the game's challenges in only a couple of day's worth of light play, leaving only the time trial option to keep them amused, you can't help but feel that more should have been made of the concept - especially considering the game's sparkling visuals.

A very boring game. There is not enough substance on each game board. Trying to take the pinball video game genre in a different direction is a noble step, but at the same time, you cannot remove things that define pinball games and make them fun.

It's just a shame that the gameplay flaws (seriously, why can't you tilt?) drag the entire package down so far. Maybe next time, Nintendo should just toss a few Koopa Troopas and Goombas into the "Pokémon Pinball" template.

To make matters worse, if the ball falls down between the flippers players are often forced to start from scratch and many times replay the stage that they previously completed to get back to where they just were. Wash, rinse, and repeat.